


The 16th Loop

by Lexalicious70



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: AU, Other, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-02
Updated: 2017-06-02
Packaged: 2018-11-08 05:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11075448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lexalicious70/pseuds/Lexalicious70
Summary: In the 16th time loop, Jane brings Eliot and Margo to Brakebills as teenagers, where they learn about magic, each other, and what it means to reveal your true self to someone you love.





	The 16th Loop

**Author's Note:**

> This story is for the 2017 Welters Challenge. Theme: “Brakebills.” I don’t own The Magicians: no profit earned, this is just for fun. Kudos and comments are magic! Enjoy!

 

The 16th Loop

By Lexalicious70 (aka Neptune_Rising70 or TheChampagneKing70)

 

“It’s getting worse for him, Henry. Please, you have to help!”

 

Eliot sat in the room just off the kitchen, the one his mother insisted on called “the parlor,” even though its tatty salmon-colored rug was discolored with age and foot traffic and the lamps were all mongrels from the local thrift store, listening. His left arm still ached fiercely from where his father had punched it, just above the elbow, and while his nose had finally stopped bleeding, it felt tender and swollen. He held the handkerchief their visitor had given him—Henry Fogg, his mother had said his name was—against his nose anyway, enjoying the comfort of its silken feel. In a world of rough, scratchy wool and worn-out cotton, the handkerchief, which was a midnight blue with slightly lighter pinpoints, was the most luxurious thing Eliot had ever touched. He hoped the man would let him keep it.

 

“I run a university for magical pedagogy, Helen, not a home for wayward boys!”

 

“He’s not a wayward boy, Henry, he’s my son and his innate abilities are only getting stronger! He’s barely been able to control his telekinesis, much less hide it from his father! Frank knows something’s different about him and it’s making him lash out. Please, Henry, I’m begging you, as a former student—”

 

“A former student, a talented one, who dropped out because some young man with big arms caught her eye at an off-campus party! A man who caused that student to give up magic! I advised you not to go with him, and now this is the result! Your son is at the mercy of abilities he inherited from you, and because you gave up your own, he has no one to help him get them under control!”

 

“But he does! You can! Please, take him to Brakebills with you! Cast a spell over his father, make him believe Eliot’s gone to a private school, before he does something to Eliot that he can’t take back!”

 

Eliot closed his eyes as silence spun out in the kitchen. Finally, Fogg sighed.

 

“Very well. I’ll foster the boy, Helen. I have another student his age that also needs asylum—a special case out of Los Angeles. Question is, will your son be willing to accompany me, a stranger, to a place he’s never been?”

 

Eliot got to his feet, torn between waiting for his mother to call him and admitting he’d been listening. He didn’t have to wait long.

 

“Eliot? Come in here, now!” His mother called, and he went to the doorway. Even at sixteen, the top of his head brushed the curved alcove. Unlike most of the sturdy, sunbaked farm boys in Whiteland, he was slender and pale, his form a startled exclamation point. Deep-set amber eyes regarded first his mother, and then Fogg. Fogg noticed that while the boy’s dark hair was cut short, almost brutally so, the whorls around his ears told the Brakebills dean that it would riot with curls if allowed to grow.

 

“Yes, ma?” Eliot asked, and his mother nodded at Henry.

 

“You’re to go with Dean Fogg now. He’s going to look after you, help you with your—your problems. You understand?”

 

“Yes, ma.” Eliot nodded, turning toward the older man. He offered Fogg back his handkerchief and Fogg waved it away casually. Something warm bloomed in Eliot’s chest as he tucked the satiny thing away, and he vowed to clean it as soon as he could.

 

“Go pack a bag. I can send the rest of your things.” His mother said, and Eliot glanced out the window, where he could see his father’s bulky silhouette out in the north field as he rock picked.

 

“What about dad?” He asked, and his mother smiled.

 

“Don’t worry about your father. Dean Fogg will talk to him.” Her mother started to reach out to touch his face but stopped, as she always did, depriving him of her affection at the last moment. “Go on. Go pack. Everything’ll be just fine, son, you’ll see.”

 

 

An hour later, Eliot found himself carrying his battered vinyl suitcase and old boy scout knapsack as Fogg created a portal behind his family’s barn. Fogg stepped toward it.

 

“Come along now, Eliot, you’re perfectly safe.” He said without looking back, and Eliot stepped through the portal after him. The thing snapped shut behind him as Eliot looked over his shoulder at it, and then they were making their way through some thick green bushes. Unlike the bleak November sky they’d left behind in Indiana, the one over Eliot’s head was a bright blue, the air warm and filled with the smell of growing things.

 

“Did we travel in time, Mr. Fogg?”

 

“Dean Fogg. You may call me Dean. And no . . . the wards around Brakebills are very old and time here tends to warp. So while it may be almost December back in the ordinary world, it’s spring here. You’ll get used to it. Hurry along, it’s nearly dinnertime and I want to get you squared away.” Fogg led him toward a three-story building with double doors. It stood in the shadow of the main building, and Eliot looked up at the massive granite block with the school’s name chiseled into it as they passed. Fogg opened the doors of the smaller building and the stale, rather industrial smell of a dormitory hallway drifted out.

 

“I know this probably isn’t what you expected, but you’re much too young to stay in the Physical Kids cottage, even I suspect that you’ll place there later. The students there are much older and I don’t believe you’re ready for their brand of—well—merriment. For now, you’ll stay here.” Fogg opened up a plain wooden door onto a small dormitory room. There was a full bed, a wooden chest of drawers, a study desk, and a few empty shelves. A thin closet was built into the opposite wall, and on the other was another door. Eliot looked around.

 

“These are connecting dorms. They’re designed to give the students a feeling of camaraderie and association. You may lock or keep it open to allow your neighbor access, it’s up to you. Now, usually we don’t have an issue with space, but thanks to a very wet winter, this is the only building that isn’t being treated for mold.” Fogg crossed the room and knocked on the door. It opened to reveal the most petite girl Eliot had ever seen. Dean Fogg wasn’t a big man but she barely came to his shoulder. Deep-set dark eyes tipped up at him, her heart-shaped face framed by long brunette hair. Dean Fogg motioned her forward.

 

“Margo, come in. I want you to meet someone. This is Eliot Waugh, he’ll be staying in the dorm adjacent to yours. Eliot, this is Margo Hanson.”

 

“Hullo.” Eliot set his things down and offered his hand. Margo took it and gave it one squeeze before letting it go as her dark eyes flicked up and down, from the worn brown hiking boots he wore, to his faded jeans and plaid shirt, now almost a size too small for him, to his home haircut.

 

“Hi.”

 

“Well! I’ll leave you two to get acquainted. Margo, perhaps if you filled Eliot in on how things work here at Brakebills and then bring him to the dining hall in about twenty minutes?” He glanced between them. “And I suspect I can leave you? There won’t be any shenanigans, the kind that happen when boys and girls are left to their own devices?”

 

A sardonic smile twisted across Margo’s painted lips.

 

“Oh, I think I can guarantee it. Right, Eliot?” She asked, and Eliot nodded, glancing away.

 

_How the hell did she know?_

“Yes . . . right.”

 

“Excellent!” Fogg nodded. “Dinner in twenty minutes then. Welcome to Brakebills, Eliot.” The dean shut the door behind him and Margo looked down at Eliot’s meager collection of belongings before her dark eyes flicked over the shirt he wore.

 

“That shirt is for someone like half your height. What’s up with that?” She asked, and Eliot took a deep breath.

 

“I grew. Over the summer. And there wasn’t much money for new things.”

 

“Well no offense, sweetie, but you look like a scarecrow that someone forgot to stuff. Job one? Get you some new clothes.”

 

“How?” Eliot asks, and Margo grinned.

 

“Oh, there’s ways. We can’t have you walking around looking like that!”

 

Eliot sat down on the bed.

 

“You’re my age, right? Sixteen? How come you’re here?”

 

“I used unauthorized magic to rob a bank in Los Angeles.”

 

Eliot stared at her, wondering if this was some kind of weird joke city people told, but then Margo frowned at him.

 

“What? I needed the money! Fogg’s magical GPA locators found me, so instead of me going into hiding or to jail, he brought me here. He says I have potential.” Margo scoffed and rolled her eyes. “What’s your story, farm fresh?”

 

“I’m not sure what I’m doing here. Except that I can make things happen just by thinking about them and that my mother made me come here with Dean Fogg because of it.”

 

“Telekinesis? That should come in handy! Come on—I know a guy, a third year, who’s about your height. Maybe we can persuade him to let you borrow some clothes.” She took his hand with authority, as if Eliot didn’t have at least three or four inches on her, and tugged him out the door.

 

**_Six Months Later_ **

****

“Margo, are you sure about this? Dean Fogg is bound to notice all these new clothes!”

 

“Dean Fogg is all wrapped up in trying to organize an international welters challenge. Believe me, we’re way under his radar.” Margo dropped several dozen shopping bags on Eliot’s bed.

 

“But we robbed a casino!”

 

“Ah!” Margo turned and wagged a finger at him. “We did not rob it! We just . . . persuaded a few of the machines to spin in our favor, that’s all! It was a measly three grand, Eliot. Not a big deal.”

 

“But the fake IDs?”

 

“It’s not my fault that the state thinks I’m not able to pull a lever down on a slot machine until I’m twenty-one. Because clearly, I do it just fine! Now come on! Quit spoiling it, try on your new stuff!” Margo pulled out dark, tailored trousers, shirts, vests, and ties from the bags. “You’re going to look amazing. And you have a great sense of style for being a farm boy!”

 

“Quit calling me that! And I—I used to order catalogs in the mail. Sears and Roebuck, J.C, Penny, so I could look at the clothing. I just never thought I’d own anything as nice as any of this.”

 

“Well now you do, and you deserve it. Go ahead! Want me to turn my back so I don’t see you in your undies?”

 

“I don’t think it matters.” Eliot replied softly, and Margo frowned.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 

“Margo? The day we met and Dean Fogg asked if he could leave us alone together . . . how did you know I was gay?”

 

“Oh. Well, I’m not sure if I knew one hundred percent until you replied. I could see it in your face.”

 

“Well. You were right. I am. I’m gay. I’ve never told anyone before. I’ve never even said it out loud before.”

 

Margo’s dark eyes widened a little.

 

“Eliot . . . are you coming out to me?”

 

“Yes. I suppose I am. I couldn’t—not to anyone where I lived before.” He took a deep breath and then gave a brief chuckle. “I can’t believe I’m doing it now, actually.”

 

“No, no!” Margo went to him and took his hands. “Eliot, I’m flattered. Honored!” She smiled up at him. “We’re best friends, right? How much time have we spent together since we met?”

 

“Almost all of it?”

 

“Almost all of it!” Margo echoed. “And how much do I like people?”

 

“Not very much at all?” Eliot ventured, and Margo rose up on her toes to kiss his cheek.

 

“You bet your ass not very much at all. So what that should tell you, Eliot Waugh, is that we are the best of best bitches and I don’t care if you’re gay, bi, pan, or if you do it with sheep—”

 

“Christ, Margo!”

 

She put a finger to his lips.

 

“Still speaking! My point is, I might not like most people, but I like you. Hell, Eliot . . . I love you. Okay?”

 

Eliot’s smile grew into a grin.

 

“Okay. Thank you. And—and I love you too.” He turned toward the bed and touched a shimmering grey vest with mother-of-pearl buttons. “So, which one do I try on first?”

 

**_Two Years Later_ **

****

“I remember when Dean Fogg first brought me to Brakebills. He told me that I couldn’t live here because the older kids’ parties were too wild.” Eliot looked up at the door of the Physical Kids’ cottage. “Why do you suppose he’s changed his mind? Aside from the fact that we got to take the entrance exam early and we both killed it, of course?”

 

He and Margo stood side by side with their bags, examining the door. There was a piece of paper tacked to it that read:

 

_Physical Kids, let yourselves in._

 

“Probably because your wardrobe was slowly taking over the dorm room and because you could barely fit through the doorway anymore?” Margo glanced up at her friend and the person she considered her soulmate. He’d changed a great deal from that nervous, closeted boy she’d met two years before. Not only had he grown to well over six feet tall, grown out his dark hair, and learned to style the curls in a way that managed to look both careless and flawless, he’d honed his taste in clothing, in food, and his skill for magic. The ease of which he’d learned the rudimentary spells Fogg had allowed him access to had impressed the dean, and they’d both been allowed to take the exam nearly four years earlier than most students did. Fogg hadn’t been certain of Margo’s chances, but Eliot had refused to take the exam unless she was allowed to as well. Both had passed beyond expectation, and he and Margo had been sorted into the Physical Kids group at Brakebills. Now they were coming to live at the cottage for the remainder of their schooling.

 

“Let yourselves in. Mmmmh.” Eliot sighed as he glanced around. “Clearly we have to find our own way in if we want to live here. Any ideas?”

 

“You could just bash the door down.” Margo tapped her temple and Eliot’s lips pursed in distaste.

 

“That’s so— _gauche_.”

 

“All right, Mr. Gauche, then let’s hear one from you!” Margo put a hand on her hip, and Eliot tipped his eyes skyward in thought before he snapped his fingers.

 

“I know! Vester’s Whirlwind!”

 

“That’s a cooperative spell, and we’ve only done it once, under Dean Fogg’s explicit supervision!”

 

“I know, but what better spell to use for two people trying to get into the same place? Come on Margo, I know you can do it! You’re more talented than you give yourself credit for.”

 

“Fine.” Margo rolled her eyes. “Stroke my ego.”

 

“If we get this right, then lots of pretty third and fourth years will want to stroke more than that because they will be very impressed.” He took her hands. “Ready?”

 

Margo took his hands, nodded, and then closed her eyes. They mirrored each other’s finger movements, touching fingertips, palms, the edges of their hands, until the spell began to form around them. They began to spin, slowly at first, and then faster, their forms blurring, edges becoming less defined. Eliot kept chanting but he could feel the way he was joining with Margo, their skin, their muscles, their _cells_ touching, and then they simply passed through the door of the Physical Kids cottage like it was made of smoke. Eliot released Margo’s hands and they were spun in opposite directions and kids yelped and scattered as drink, books, and empty CD cases flew and bounced off the walls. Eliot grunted as he bounced with them and slid gracelessly down the wall, the faces of the amazed older students staring at him. He looked over at Margo, who was sitting against the opposite wall, dazed but giggling. He grinned at her and raised a showy, elegant hand.

 

“TADA!”

 

The applause began somewhere in the back of the room and then quickly spread as he and Margo were help up, dusted off, and checked over for wounds. A fourth year brought them smoky green drinks in martini glasses, and one sip let Eliot know that he and Margo were home.

 

“Isn’t she cute?” A tall, lanky girl with bleached hair streaked purple asked a friend as several older girls surrounded Margo. “So tiny, like a baby deer!”

 

Margo drained her glass, grabbed another from a tray as someone carried it past, and glared up at the girl with enough outraged body language to make her take a surprised step back.

 

“Sweetie? I ain’t no fuckin’ _Bambi_!”

 

**_One Year Later_ **

****

“Are we sure this isn’t some massive prank the third years aren’t pulling on us? It’s fucking freezing up here!”

 

Eliot shook his head as he looked across the starlit campus of Brakebills. He and Margo were standing on the roof of the main building, a bottle of Johnnie Walker in his hand, two thick hanks of rope over Margo’s shoulder. While they had been living in the Physical Kids cottage for the last year, Dean Fogg had kept Eliot and Margo on a restricted program until the start of this most recent semester, and now, at nineteen and nearly twenty, they were the youngest first years in Brakebills history.

 

“It’s the last part of the trials and if we don’t go through with it, we’re finished here. And by the way? Fuck that because I am not going back to Indiana!”

 

“Okay, fine, God!” Margo hung onto Eliot’s arm for balance as she stripped off her high heels, then her pantyhose. Eliot unbuttoned his vest and set it aside, then his aubergine shirt and trousers, stripping until he was nude.

 

“I better get these clothes back after whatever is supposed to happen happens. The trousers alone were $150!”

 

“Give me a shot of that whiskey.” Margo stood naked before him and Eliot kept his gaze averted as he handed it over. She took a shot, grimaced, and handed it back. Eliot took a slug and then picked up the bowl of paints they’d brought to the roof with them. Eliot looked down at her as they stood facing each other, and then Margo nodded. Eliot dipped his fingers into the paint, drawing sigils on Margo’s face and shoulders, and then passed her the bowl. He closed his eyes as she drew vertical lines under his eyes and down his chest and shoulders before using one of the heavy hanks of ropes to bind his narrow wrists together. He did the same to her, working a bit awkwardly. They stood there, shivering, Eliot’s body long and lean and pale in the starlight, Margo’s darker and curvaceous.

 

“What happens now?” Margo asked, and Eliot swallowed hard.

 

“We have to reveal our innermost truth to each other. Bare our souls.”

 

“I don’t know what I’m supposed to tell you about myself that I haven’t already.” Margo picked up the bottle of scotch with her bound hands and took a long pull on it. Eliot watched her. “God, this is so stupid! We’re best friends . . . soul mates! I don’t know why Dean Fogg insisted we be partners when we already know each other’s truths!”

 

“Maybe he knows something we don’t.” Eliot sighed. “Seems like he always has—like how he knew my mother used to be a student here and that the powers I have came from her.”

 

“Shit! Really?”

 

“Yeah. I used think there was something terribly wrong with me. But she knew all along what it was. She just never told me about any of it because she was afraid of my father. So was I. I guess it was that fear that kept her from calling Dean Fogg that day when I was fourteen—aka the worst day of my life.”

 

“What happened?” Margo asked, looking up at him, and Eliot met her gaze.

 

“I killed someone.”

 

Margo’s eyes widened until Eliot could see his own reflection in them, a pallid face etched with stubble, dark curls tumbling down from their carefully coiffed positions and falling over his forehead. He felt tears build in his own eyes.

 

“Please don’t hate me, Margo.”

 

“I don’t! I swear, El! Tell me what happened.”

 

“There was this boy. A big kid who lived on the farm down the road from us. He was—” Eliot’s mouth tightened. “He beat me up. So one day I was walking back from town, I’d gone to the general store for a soda and a Clark Bar because by then I was already very unhappy and eating my feelings at a professional level. And I saw him on the other side of the street. He saw me too, and he started crossing over. And there was this bus.” Eliot shook his head. “I barely thought the thought, Margo.”

 

“Whammo?” She whispered.

 

“Whammo.” Eliot nodded. “It was like he exploded. I knew almost instantly what had happened. What I’d done. Logan Kinnear died on impact, I got a nosebleed, and I never even got to finish my candy bar or drink my soda. I ran home—my mom helped me clean up and the whole thing was ruled as an accident. They said he must have been playing in the street. Not paying attention. But it was me, Margo. It was the first time I ever used my telekinesis, and someone died because of it.”

 

Margo nodded, but the defensive, self-assured mask she wore all the time was nowhere to be seen. She looked like a frightened child.

 

“My mother is a prostitute.” She said suddenly. “Or was—I don’t know if she’s alive or what. My grandparents raised me until I was about thirteen, but then they died. My grandmother got dementia and once she died, it was like my grandfather died from the inside out. He was gone a month later, and I went into foster care. It’s not a good place to be, El. A lot of the families either just want the money or easy pickings . . . someone they think won’t fight back. But I did. My grandparents didn’t have any idea about who my father was either, so I decided to start taking care of myself. That’s how I ended up getting involved in that bank robbery. I was the lookout.” She looked up at Eliot. “I know I act confident, but honestly? I don’t really have any idea who I am or where I came from.”

 

Eliot slipped his arms around her and a moment later he felt the warmth of her arms around his as well.

 

“Your ropes are gone.” He said, and Margo stepped back to look at him.

 

“So are yours—oh!” Margo doubled over suddenly and Eliot reached out to her when pain streamed through his shoulders, his arms, his chest.

 

“Margo—” Something was forcing him downward, making him smaller, and he cried out, grabbing at Margo, as they both pitched over the edge of the roof. He transformed in midair and then he was pumping his wings—his wings!—madly. He rose into the air, a sleek male Canada goose. Margo swept in beside him, also transformed, and as they raced to catch up with the rest of the first years, flying south. Eliot let the air currents guide him, freed of his guilt, his burden, and he honked joyfully at Margo as they flew away from Brakebills and into the night sky.

 

**_One Year Later_ **

****

“El, wait up!”

 

Eliot glanced over his shoulder as Margo ran along the sidewalk to catch up with him.

 

“Christ, it’s like trying to outrun a giraffe!” She panted, and Eliot cocked a brow at her spike heels.

 

“Maybe if you gave Daisy Duke her shoes back?”

 

“Fuck you, they’re amazing and you’re jealous. So where are you hurrying off to?”

 

“Dean Fogg is making me go meet one of the potentials and chaperone him to the exam room. I can’t believe I have to babysit!”

 

“Can I come with you?”

 

“You better not, the dean told me not to be late for—” He frowned and pulled a small placard from his vest pocket and glanced at it. “Quentin Coldwater. Have you ever heard a more absurd name?”

 

“He’s probably some Manhattan hipster whose parents sent him to Young Shakespeare Camp and raised him on kale and wasabi peas.” Margo smirked, and Eliot put the card back in his pocket and pulled a pack of Merits from his trouser pocket, tapping it on his wrist as he rolled his eyes.

 

“God. Just what I need . . . to play wet nurse to a wayward vegan!”

 

“Mr. Waugh, don’t you have somewhere to be?” Dean Fogg strode past them both as he checked his pocketwatch, and Eliot made the cigarettes vanish with a flick of his hand.

 

“On my way, Dean Fogg!” He got moving again, pausing only when the dean had vanished around the corner. He kissed Margo’s cheek.

 

“I’ll be back in thirty, Bambi. Have a cocktail ready for me, something tells me I’ll need it!”

 

“I will. And don’t call me Bambi!” She called after Eliot’s retreating form. His laughter streamed back at her over his shoulder, and Margo rolled her eyes as she headed for the Physical Kids cottage, knowing it would be the only reply she’d receive.

 

**_Ten Months Later_ **

****

“Have you both considered this decision carefully? Not that it’s my job to talk you out of it.” Dean Fogg looked from Margo to Eliot, both of who stood in front of his desk, holding hands. They both looked haggard, exhausted, washed out. Eliot nodded.

 

“Quentin is dead, Dean Fogg. Alice too . . . Penny lost his hands.”

 

“But you defeated the Beast!” Dean Fogg countered, and Margo shook her head.”

 

“It’s not a win for us. Our friends are dead. We can’t stay here.”

 

“We’ve earned this. We’re tired, Dean Fogg . . . we’re tired and staying here would mean facing the ghosts of Alice and—and Quentin—around every fucking corner. We bested the monster.” Eliot pulled a flask from his pocket and took a long pull on it—he’d been in some stage of inebriation ever since he’d watched the Beast twist Alice’s head around on her shoulders before ripping Quentin’s throat out. Eliot had blacked out after that, but Margo and Penny, now minus his hands, told him that he’d gone after the Beast with a primal scream of rage, using his telekinesis to rip the demon literally to shreds. But that didn’t matter to Eliot. He wasn’t a hero. Quentin was still dead.

 

“Now let us go.”

 

“Very well.” Dean Fogg rounded his desk. “You realize that it’s very uncommon—almost unorthodox—to send students away from Brakebills in pairs?”

 

Eliot looked down at Margo.

 

“Both of us have been unorthodox students, Dean Fogg. So doesn’t that make this a perfect ending to our time here?” He asked, and the dean nodded.

 

“I suppose it does.” He flexed his hands. “Are you ready?”

 

“Just a second.” Margo touched Eliot’s cheek and her throat bobbed. Eliot mirrored her action.

 

“Bye, Bambi.” He said softly, and Margo blinked away tears.

 

“Try to remember me.” She said, and then both she and Eliot were borne up and away from Brakebills by the dean’s spell, to one of the dozen places where they sent mind-wiped magicians who were too broken to practice their craft anymore.

 

**_Plaxcorp, the San Francisco office, Two Weeks Later_ **

****

“Hey, newbie!”

 

Eliot turned from the break room’s coffee maker, where he was using the hot water setting on the Keurig to make himself a cup of tea. His manager, Gary Groff, a carelessly jovial man with a russet beard, stood in the doorway in one of his terrible sweater vests.

 

“Yes, Mr. Groff?”

 

“Got a job for you!” He stepped aside, and the most petite woman Eliot had ever seen walked into the room. She had long brunette hair, done up in a Japanese twist, and intelligent dark eyes that seemed to note everything in the room. Gary smiled.

 

“Eliot, this is Margo Hanson. She’s new here and she’ll be working in your department. I was hoping you’d show her around. Margo, this is Eliot Waugh, one of our data wranglers here on the 39th floor.”

 

Eliot set his tea mug down as Margo walked up to him. She barely came to his shoulder and her movements were lithe, graceful.

 

 _Like a deer_ , Eliot thought to himself, and offered his hand.

 

“Nice to meet you.”

 

Margo’s painted lips twisted into a sardonic smile that Eliot responded to immediately—this one looked like she could even make data entry interesting.

 

“Pleasure’s mine,” Margo replied, shaking his hand, and Gary nodded.

 

“Well! I have other employees to terrorize. Think you two will be okay on your own?”

 

Eliot looked down at Margo, who smiled widely. Something mischievous danced in her eyes, and for a moment, Eliot swore he tasted some strange and exotic flavor on his tongue, something rich and smoky—something magical.

 

“Oh!” Margo nodded. “I think I can guarantee it.”

FIN


End file.
